The amount of liquids dispensed from liquid containers need to be monitored for many endeavors today. For instance, the management of establishments such as bars and taverns have long found it necessary to carefully monitor the relationship between liquor dispensed and receipts by controlling the quantity of liquor dispensed from a specific bottle and recording the sale.
A few systems have been proposed to date for measuring and recording the amount of liquid dispensed from liquid containers. One such system includes a spout that is configured to attach to an opening of a liquid container. This spout also uses a portion-control mechanism to control the desired amount of liquid poured from the liquid container. The spout includes a radio transmitter for emitting signals containing activity information. A receiver receives the transmitted signals, and provides these signals to a computer at the establishment that processes the signals into text for viewing.
Some establishments have resisted using monitoring systems that utilize portion-control mechanisms since some consumers find such mechanism to be obtrusive. Also, portion-control devices require manual activation and are at times bulky. Hence, there is a need for a compact free-pour apparatus that measures the amount of dispensed liquid in an unobtrusive fashion without requiring manual activation.
There is also a need for a remote monitoring system that allows an administrator to monitor liquid consumption for multiple sites. Ideally, this monitoring system would allow the administrator to monitor liquid consumption from a variety of remote locations. Also, this system ideally would require minimal technical oversight for the hardware and software that collects the data at each establishment.